In addition to providing me a review copy & a giveaway copy of the book, Chef Del Sroufe & the kind folks at BenBella Books have also allowed me to share one of my favorite recipes from the cookbook. I couldn’t decide between sharing theAlmost Instant Sweet Potato Pudding or the Warm Mushroom Salad Sandwiches so I took a poll of my readers, and the winner by a landslide was the Mushroom Sandwiches.

While I love the Sweet Potato Pudding, I was secretly hoping the Mushroom Sandwiches would win as I can see myself making these regularly. I’ve already made these sandwiches twice in the past month, with the most recent batch being a double-batch for my parents to try!

You might find this hard to believe but I have a bit of a mushroom-phobia and I still am obsessed with this sandwich. I buy the pre-sliced mushrooms so I don’t have to touch them, and then I cook the mushroom & onion mixture (step 2 in the recipe) for way longer than the recipe calls for, until the mushrooms have shrunken to about half their original size. As a bonus, my fraidy-cat method makes the onions & mushrooms sweat quite a bit, and the excess liquid drained off makes for an amazing mushroom broth!

I’ve only tried this topping on toast, but I’d love to try it soon on top of some rotini pasta for a stroganoff-like dish.

[Photo via BenBella Books]

Warm Mushroom Salad Sandwiches

Makes 4 sandwiches

A friend of mine used to make this sandwich as a late-night snack using leftover sauce she had from pasta. I fell in love with it and asked her often where the idea came from to make this

delicious sauce into a sandwich—she never told me. This is my interpretation of that late-night snack. I eat it frequently, sometimes on toasted bread, open faced, and sometimes on a bun.